Habilitus defended the 30th of June 1999 at the University of Paris X-Nanterre in front of a jury composed of Nathan Wachtel, Jacques Galinier, Maurice Godelier, Patrick Menget, Aurore Monod Becquelin and Bernard Saladin d'Anglure.

Fieldworks :

In Wan country (Ivory Coast), September-November 1977, for preparing a master thesis in geography.

After his 1 st fieldwork experience, ED tried to decipher the apparently undertermined social organization of the Northern Ojibways in light of their myths, reversing the usual perspective for anthropologists. He progressively extended his scope of analysis to all North-American Indians cultures, where he found that the logical transformations discovered by Lévi-Strauss in the Amerindian mythology applied also for artifacts, rituals, social organization, kinships terminologies, and more recently (with his colleage the linguist Michel de Fornel) to languages. He became incidently specialists of Lévi-Strauss. In 2007, ED published on the epistemology of anthropology showing the importance of national traditions and their persistency although an apparent homogeneization of the discipline. In parallel, being involved in the process of designing and building the new museum du quai Branly in Paris (the new museum of ethnography with an amphasis on art), he is drawing on his experience to deepen his reflexion on the so-called primitive arts on one side, and on museology and curatorship on the other.

1992 The Lost Universe, Pawnee Life and Culture, Gene Weltfish et Beyond Values and Ideology. Tales from Six North American Indian Peoples et Images in Stones, A theory on Interpreting Rock Art, Guy Lanoue, L'Homme 122-124, pp. 455-458.